Aadhaar is a 12 digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification
Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India.

This number will serve as a proof of identity and address, anywhere in India.

Any individual, irrespective of age and gender, who is a resident in India and satisfies
the verification process laid down by the UIDAI can enrol for Aadhaar.

Each individual needs to enroll only once which is free of cost.

Each Aadhaar number will be unique to an individual and will remain valid for life.
Aadhaar number will help you provide access to services like banking, mobile phone
connections and other Govt and Non-Govt services in due course.

Some other information about Aadhaar:
Aadhaar will be :

Easily verifiable in an online, cost-effective way.

Unique and robust enough to eliminate the large number of duplicate and fake identities
in government and private databases.

A random number generated, devoid of any classification based on caste, creed, religion
and geography.

Why Aadhaar ?

Aadhaar-based identification will have two unique features:

Universality, which is ensured because Aadhaar will over time be recognised and
accepted across the country and across all service providers.

Every resident's entitlement to the number.

The number will consequently form the basic, universal identity infrastructure over
which Registrars and Agencies across the country can build their identity-based
applications.

Unique Identification of India (UIDAI) will build partnerships with various Registrars
across the country to enrol residents for the number. Such Registrars may include
state governments, state Public Sector Units (PSUs), banks, telecom companies, etc.
These Registrars may in turn partner with enrolling agencies to enrol residents
into Aadhaar.

Aadhaar will ensure increased trust between public and private agencies and residents.
Once residents enrol for Aadhaar, service providers will no longer face the problem
of performing repeated Know Your Customer (KYC) checks before providing services.
They would no longer have to deny services to residents without identification documents.
Residents would also be spared the trouble of repeatedly proving identity through
documents each time they wish to access services such as obtaining a bank account,
passport, or driving license etc.

By providing a clear proof of identity, Aadhaar will empower poor and underprivileged
residents in accessing services such as the formal banking system and give them
the opportunity to easily avail various other services provided by the Government
and the private sector. The centralised technology infrastructure of the UIDAI will
enable 'anytime, anywhere, anyhow' authentication. Aadhaar will thus give migrants
mobility of identity. Aadhaar authentication can be done both offline and online,
online authentication through a cell phone or land line connection will allow residents
to verify their identity remotely. Remotely, online Aadhaar-linked identity verification
will give poor and rural residents the same flexibility that urban non-poor residents
presently have in verifying their identity and accessing services such as banking
and retail. Aadhaar will also demand proper verification prior to enrolment, while
ensuring inclusion. Existing identity databases in India are fraught with problems
of fraud and duplicate or ghost beneficiaries. To prevent these problems from seeping
into the Aadhaar database, the UIDAI plans to enrol residents into its database
with proper verification of their demographic and biometric information. This will
ensure that the data collected is clean from the beginning of the program. However,
much of the poor and under-privileged population lack identity documents and Aadhaar
may be the first form of identification they will have access to. The UIDAI will
ensure that its Know Your Resident (KYR) standards do not become a barrier for enrolling
the poor and has accordingly developed an Introducer system for residents who lack
documentation. Through this system, authorised individuals ('Introducers') who already
have an Aadhaar, can introduce residents who don't have any identification documents,
enabling them to receive their Aadhaar.

Who can get an Aadhaar ?

An individual who is a resident in India and satisfies the verification process
laid down by the UIDAI can get an Aadhaar.

How to get Aadhaar ?

The process to get an Aadhaar will be circulated by the local media upon which residents
need to go to the nearest Enrolment Camp to register for an Aadhaar.

The resident primarily needs to carry certain documents which will be specified
in the media advertisement.

Upon registering for Aadhaar, residents will go through a biometric scanning of
ten fingerprints and iris.

They will then be photographed and given an enrolment number upon completion.

Depending on the enrolment agency, residents will be issued an Aadhaar number within
60 to 90 days.

Contact Centre Details

The UIDAI has set up a Contact Centre.

The users of this system are expected to be residents, registrars and enrolment
agencies.

Any resident seeking enrolment is given a printed acknowledgement form with an Enrolment
Number, that enables the resident to make queries about her/his enrolment status
through any communication channel of the contact centre.

In the last twenty years, India has undergone a transformation of its economic and
regulatory structures. Policy reforms in this period have led to the increasing
maturity of our markets, as well as healthy regulation. The emphasis on de-licensing,
entrepreneurship, the use of technology and decentralization of governance to the
state and local level have in particular, shifted India from a restrictive, limited
access society to a more empowered, open access economy, where people are able to
access resources and services more easily and effectively. But despite these efforts,
access to finance has remained scarce in rural India, and for the poorest residents
in the country. Today, the proportion of rural residents who lack access to bank
accounts remains at 40%, and this rises to over three-fifths of the population in
the east and north-east parts of India.

This exclusion is debilitating. Economic opportunity is after all, intertwined with
financial access. Such financial access is especially valuable for the poor—it offers
a cushion to a group whose incomes are often volatile and small. It gives them opportunities
to build savings, insure themselves against income shocks and make investments.
Such savings and insurance protect the poor against potentially ruinous events—illness,
loss of employment, droughts, and crop failures. However due to the lack of access
to financial services, many of the Indian poor face difficulties in accumulating
savings.

To mitigate the lack of financial access in India, the regulator has focused on
improving the reach of financial services in new and innovative ways — through no-frills
accounts, the liberalization of banking and ATM policies, and branchless banking
with business correspondents (BC's), which enables local intermediaries such as
self-help groups and kirana stores to provide banking services. Related efforts
have also included the promotion of core-banking solutions in Regional Rural Banks;
and the incorporation of the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) to provide
a national infrastructure for payments and settlements in the country.

Advancements in technology such as core banking, ATMs, and mobile connectivity have
also had enormous impact on banking. Mobile phones in particular present an enormous
opportunity in spreading financial services across India. These technologies have
reduced the need for banks to be physically close to their customers, and banks
have been consequently able to experiment with providing services through internet
as well as mobile banking. These options, in addition to ATMs, have made banking
accessible and affordable for many urban non-poor residents across the country.

Besides challenges of access and identity, a third limitation has been the cost
of providing banking services to the poor who transact in smaller amounts, commonly
referred to as micropayments. Banks consider such payments unattractive since transaction
costs may be too high to bear.

By providing a clear proof of identity, Aadhaar will empower poor and underprivileged
residents in accessing services such as the formal banking system and give them
the opportunity to easily avail various other services provided by the Government
and the private sector.

Benefits

The Unique Identification number (Aadhaar), which identifies individuals uniquely
on the basis of their demographic information and biometrics will give individuals
the means to clearly establish their identity to public and private agencies across
the country. It will also create an opportunity to address the existing limitations
in financial inclusion. The Aadhaar can help poor residents easily establish their
identity to banks. As a result, banks will be able to scale up their business level.